Brainlet struggle

Who else /literal brainlet/ here and still trying to cope? Or who else almost literally feels handicapped with their academic pursuits?

> Can't do basic math or grasp/remember basic concepts after 8pm
> Can't do basic math or grasp basic concepts period if I haven't had 7+ hours of sleep
> Work at half speed unless I've had copius amounts of caffiene
> Will stare at a the page and ink of a problem for like a half hour without being able to form a coherent thought if I'm the slightest bit tired.
> near-permanent brain fog

Actually really love caffiene pills for this. 200mg delivered faster than coffee ever could; actually makes me feel like I can work like a normal human being for an hour or two.

Admittedly, its forced me to start learning some healthier habits - forcing myself to get up earlier, get to bed earlier, have a regular sleep schedule, its forced me to keep my studying and working to a "human" schedule, typically getting to campus by 8AM and leaving by 8PM, and never really working while I'm home. But its frustrating to feel like even a single late night can set me back all week, or like I can completely bomb an exam on material I knew because I didn't have a chance to get coffee before it and didn't have caffiene pills or something. I know a lot of people are going to claim that I've just made myself dependent, but I've gone months without coffee or caffiene of any kind and its been the same either way, exept just slow all the fucking time instead.

I'd like to hear about the other brainlets that struggle on Veeky Forums.

Do you exercise? It sounds like you have a health problem desu.

Used to run 5-10 miles a day on a regular basis and lift. Didn't make a difference.

Did you get blood work done? Sounds like a thyroid problem, maybe. Also, your food makes a big difference aswell.

I haven't gotten bloodwork done, though i've been tempted to for a number of reasons for a long time.

Its not typically a problem of energy, though, just the brain-fog. Other anons struggle with this too, right?

Cocaine. Seriously. There's a reason why people use it. Take 3 shots of whiskey, wait for the buzz to kick in, then snort a line. You'll notice the effect immediately.
Or just try mindfulness meditation or do your work first thing in the morning.

Mindfullness meditation has honestly been an unbelievable help. And yeah, I've been shifting my work towards the morning.

Despite my inadverdent blog post, i had honestly wanted to hear about and talk to other anons who also weren't the most naturally gifted. How they worked and what they felt they worked against.

Are you absentminded? Are you good at planning? Do you find it easy to pay attention to details? Are you mentally engaged with the world around you? Do you procrastinate?

Yes, Attention Deficit Disorder.

Procrastinating used to be my death-knell. It wasn't until recently and through a lot of mindfulness meditation that I've got a handle on it.

And yes to everything. I really can't handle anything but the simplest spoken instructions and its taken a lot of effort over the past three years to learn to stay present.

This is also me

I think diet has a lot to do with it. I made an observation after leaving the country and returning a bunch of times. Every time I went overseas, I'd eat the food there and notice an instant and overwhelming change. Like a rush of vitality, my body felt
great and my thoughts would be insanely clear, like all the focus and sharpness of amphetamines but without the edge. I could do math problems without getting lost, could maintain multiple thoughts and thought processes in my head without any problem and switch between them, it was like all my thoughts were nearly organized in a list and I could focus in on whichever one I wanted to. My memory was outstanding.

However, after returning to America, by the time I had my first few meals, I'd notice a deep feeling of exhaustion and tiredness overwhelming me and lethargy clouding my thoughts. I just attributed it to jet lag, but I only noticed it upon return to America, and the lethargy and brain fog would never clear up, just get worse and worse.

Not to sound paranoid, but I really think it's something in the food or even the water that slows us down. Maybe all the fucking sugar and processed corn syrup.

Never told anyone this irl because it sounds exaggerated but I have no reason to just make this up.

I absolutely agree. After I decided to start strength training and to overhaul my diet, I noticed that my mind was clearer and sharper than it had ever been.

BEING A MORON IS NOT SCIENCE

THIS IS NOT SCIENCE OKAY?

GO TO /ADV/ IF YOU ARE A FAGGOT WHO CAN"T ACT LIKE AN ADULT AND YOU NEED OTHER VIRGIN LOSERS TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO. JUST BECAUSE YOUR QUERY INVOLVES LEARNING, THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT SCIENCE RELATED. EVERYTHING IN LIFE INVOLVES LEARNING. COOKING YOUR DINNER INVOLVES LEARNING; ARE YOU GOING TO POST WHAT YOU ATE LAST NIGHT ON Veeky Forums? OF COURSE NOT

GOD YOU STUPID NIGGERS ARE SO FUCKING NIGGER

MODSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Where did OP touch you?

I struggle with this problem too user
I have a sense that it is from bad habits, distraction, patterns on how you think and treat things. Look up areas online on how to think better

The internet destroyed my ability to focus for longer periods of time.

Feelsbadman.

Are you a subvocalizer too, OP?

>tfw get songs/phrases stuck in my head incessantly where I just repeat it over and over in my head and become unable to think
I feel retarded.

my sleep schedule is really fucked up, I get 4 hours a knight and the last few hours I only play chess, I don't know why but i can only play well when it is very late at night and I have little sleep, I also have never used caffeine

You sound like me desu. I got frustrated with the fact that I wasted so much time. Coffee helped but I get terrible stomaches on it. My doc perscribed me with ADHD meds. I'm sorta iffy on them, they do raise my energy and I can finally focus and think quickly but the addiction factor scares me. Also I can go full autismo on them and spend hours on assignment problems because I get too into them and want to learn everything on the most fundamental level. I have no idea when to quit. Beats wasting 7 hours a day "preparing" to even start the assignment and then not even finishing it like i planned to, at least I get somewhere after all that time.

God yes. Its so fucking annoying. That sort of thing gets stuck in my head incredibly easily yet at the same time, its virtually impossible for me to just 'use' or 'speak' in my internal monologue unless I'm imagining a conversation with somebody else.

it makes me feel so fucking weird, because I'll just start making the mouth movements for all of it too and forget i'm just walking through the middle of campus.

I've tried adderall and it felt amazing. Not in the euphoric, focus-on-everything kind of way people talk about, but just so.. level and normal.

wew lad, similar here. i become superman with them then have a racing heart and terrible anxiety and stuff after. sooo much work gets done. i try not to spam them though since i dont want to die but it feels so good to actually be able to focus and work

>4 hours a knight
cuck

only way to nail this is to get into a good workflow for an extended amount of time i.e. see major improvements for like a month

chances are you've been 'there' before but it was fleeting

Damn lad. This exactly describes me. Is it autism? ADHD? Or are we just complaining about things that everyone else experiences?

While drinking one night with my mother and girlfriend she confided in me that she always thought I was on the spectrum but didn't want to get me tested for risk of "separating me from the other boys" (a lost cause when I already spent a good chunk of elementary school literally without speaking to anybody).

girlfriend is in psychology and is convinced its both.

>be me
>be a humanities plebeian who's curious as fuck about der sciences 'n shit
>see a Stanford course on YT by motherfucking Leonard Susskind about Cosmology
>don't understand jack shit cuz quantum mechanics
>open the quantum mechanics course
>don't understand jack shit cuz classical mechanics
>open the classical mechanics course
>don't understand jack shit cuz calculus
>Khan academy to the rescue
>don't understand jack shit cuz I'm just plainly stupid

Feels bad to be a plebeian. Math is 2 much 4 my third world, shitskin brain. Guess I'll be forever a brainlet.

90% of it is about the time put into it.

Most people in science learned calc in highschool and have had near-daily exposure to it for years. Admittedly, they're almost all still absolute shit at calc, but mainly retain enough to do a derivative here or there and enough to know what to plug into wolfram alpha.

maybe find some more broad overviews of what you're interested in instead of the nuts and bolts.

Heh, that's funny. Something similar happened to me while reading a book about programming. Except that the Khan Academy video actually helped me to build a basis on that mathematical concept I was lacking.

I would suggest you watch the video a second time. Maybe you were not focused enough.

Yeah you pretty much hit the nail on the head. I'm in EE and we use a shit ton of calc but I'd honestly say that my general calculus solving ability is worse than it was in high school. I've just been exposed to it so much that when we learn a new concept and I see something like a derivative, integral or ODE I sort of know why it's there and don't get intimidated by the symbol. I feel like such a fraud half the time.

Same. Its like I just remember the most basic rules for derivatives and integrals by rote and forget how to derive or prove any of it. And I'm fucked if it involves any more in-depth analysis than that.

I'm actually really tempted to pick up a real analysis textbook to supplement this, but its fucking impossible to find that time as a third-year physics undergrad, I've already got my actual classes and research to worry about.

Running a lot can actually increase cortisol in your body and make you more unhealthy than doing, say, HIIT every day and lifting every other day or so.

>tfw can't remember trig shit, differentiation and integration rules
fuck bros i hate calculus. cal3 is killing me

I've honestly done everything along those lines. Admittedly, I felt overall fucking amazing during those more active times in my life, but the issues with focusing have always been the same.

But yeah. Running + activity = good for brain, period.

It's just a board, austist. Go outside.

>tfw when 3 years into engineering
>still don't know how to do integration by parts
>have to look it up each time

feels bad man.

>I get 4 hours a knight and the last few hours I only play chess
I see what you did there ;)

>she always thought I was on the spectrum
FUCK. Why does it have to be socially abnormal to say shit like this to people's faces? I can only imagine the number of people I've interacted with who thought I was a total autist but never said anything.

I could never remember them either, but I actually found a really good way of remembering integration by parts from the derivative of products.

I've also never used TeX on here, so let's try.

\[\frac{d}{dx}[ f(x) g(x) ] = \frac{d f(x)}{dx} g(x) + f(x) \frac{d g(x)}{dx}\]
\[f(x) \frac{d g(x)}{dx} = - \frac{d f(x)}{dx} g(x) + \frac{d}{dx}[ f(x) g(x) ] \]
\[\int f(x) \frac{d g(x)}{dx} = - \int \frac{d f(x)}{dx} g(x) + f(x) g(x) |_{x_1}^{x_2} \]

So then whenever you need it you can remember it in three lines from a basic rule of derivation.

Fuck. Seriously, how do you use TeX on here?

Anyway.

When I was a NEET last year I tried to study on the night shift to get used to it and despite being able to sleep many hours, it is like my fucking brain slows down after 8pm and it goes literally dead after 10pm...

Then I got a job somehow as a filthy code monkey 9 to 5 (it makes me very miserable but I needed to stop being a NEET), and I just dropped off school not even a week later because I just could not stay awake.

This year I'm resuming my studies because I don't want to do this shit for the rest of my life but I don't know how the fuck I'm going to cope with my exhaustion...

Also, I like math but I struggle a lot with it, and with physics even more, it sucks to be a brainlet.

sounds like a medical problem to me. hit up a for a full health check

Would you recommend it for a person with a weak heart?

My brain focus dies after 4pm and after 8pm most sentences are not comprehensible. I don't even wake up early.

Will waking up earlier than 9am give me more brain time, anons? Or will I just die sooner in the day?

I don't know, if I wake up 9am I am ok, feels natural.

If I wake up at 7am, I struggle to get up but somehow I feel more energetic on the morning, but in the late afternoon and night forget it, exhaustion gets you (perhaps a nap would help? sadly I don't have the possibility to get one)

If I get up past 10.. lets say 11am or later, my brain feels very.. sluggish, slow, heavy.. oversleep tears me apart for some reason.

im great at math and can grasp a problem easily if i practice it alot by keeping to write it but i tend to make shitty silly mistakes in exams that could've been easily noitced for no reason i get the concept easily but silly mistakes kills me. probably because im unhealthy as fuck and eat too much

You forgot a minus sign user!

I severely lack social skills and becomes frustrated whenever I have difficulty understanding something. It's hard for me to learn things, because I overthink and can't focus.

>Used to run 5-10 miles a day on a regular basis and lift.
doesnt make a shred of difference if the diet isnt there.

Maybe you're not an autist, but has traits that are common in it. I have been thought to be autist by many people throughout life (I did 1.5 year of psychology and even there people thought I was an autist), but I once asked my psychiatrist whether I am an autist (she had previously denied that, so I wanted to understand that further), and she said that although I'm really obsessed with some stuff and socially awkward, that's due to OCD and lack of social experiences. In her experience, autists have other traits that I don't have, and ordinary people, with lack of both theoretical and practical knowledge, tend to confuse people like me with autists.

TL;DR you shouldn't jump to any conclusions. If you are really curious, find a professional with actual experience with autists to truly know if you are one.

Kys.

I didn't even mention whether you were good at following instructions, but that's also a major indicator IMO. You may have ADHD-PI or SCT. See a psychiatrist and consider helpful nootropics as well.

Adderall/Vyvanse + Guanfacine/Strattera might be helpful. Combined with a stack of multivitamin, magnesium, Vitamin C, melatonin, fish oil, etc.

If you have a propensity for OCD, N-acetyl Cysteine may be able to help. There are studies out there showing it can help with bipolar disorder, trichtillomania, blurry/racing thoughts, and other mental disorders related to OCD.

It's not really harmful at all, since it converts into endogenous glutathione in the body (a powerful antioxidant). It's often used for treat acute liver toxicity at large doses.

Keep trying as hard as you can and you will get better at it.

I'm this user and I forgot to add that I also had OCD as a child. I've kept it under control for most of my adult life though as it was very mild. But I can't help but think that my inability to focus on things, and the way in which my brain gets wrapped up into repeating songs/phrases in my head is somehow related to it.

just b urself :)

I'm already on meds, to stop taking them altogether, but thanks for the info, user. I've kept just the habit of walking back and forth on my house while listening to music, but that's harmless for my life now and keeps me fit.

NAC is available as an over-the-counter supplement, and it's very safe. Consider it if you need a little extra boost.

Well, then Iguess I'm a brainlet too. And I'm about to get a BS in bio with minor in Math. By sleeping and eating better, you're taking care of yourself and keeping yourself in tiptop shape. You'll get better and "stronger" if you just keep chuggin.

I think the problem you have is you keep testing yourself instead of solving the problems. Everyone has the ability to improve themselves if they put in the effort. If you believe in yourself you can achieve anything. Sure some people are born with a bonus (higher problem solving skills) but if you put in the time you can surpass them fast. Try and set a schedule for yourself. Sleep 8+ hours. Eat breakfast, do some sports, and when you feel ready work on your math. Never doubt yourself, because you will only be holding yourself back.

I believe in you user

iktf

So there has been many replies but from what I'm gathering from joining late brotha is that you gotta focus on yourself that mental fog is there for a reason you gotta clear the "Air" in your head space. I like to think myself as a modern philosopher. That's had a lot of hard time and hard lessons to learn. In my persuit of gaining inner sanctum and outer rewards. I've come to realize once you put your mind to something the world becomes second nature but first the biggest battle is within man I suggest meditation self help study and listening to motivation music sorry to hear about the mental fog I hope this 24 year old mindset can help out anyone. Much love peace and remember always question your motives

we're all gonna make it

i'm you
fucking brain fog making me feel worthless every single day
add ADD to this and I'm feeling like a failure almost every day